In the field of modern merchandizing, tags or labels placed on various items of goods may include codes which are generally in bar form (optical or magnetic) with the bars spaced in precise arrangements to indicate certain information. And, while the use of black and white coded bars has been utilized with much success, other code arrangements are being pursued to obtain more flexibility and greater capacity for additional information.
Certain prior art relevant to the present invention is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,643,068, to W. L. Mohan et al., wherein a circular label is comprised of pie-shaped segments of different areas and a decoder scans the indicia on the circular label in a rotary fashion or in a circular sweep. The indicia is comprised of data bits, with each bit comprising a pair of contrasting areas, and the ratio of the areas defining the binary status of each bit.
Additionally, U.S. Pat. No. 3,654,435, to A. Vaccaro, discloses a magnetically readable bar and code wherein the code is formed of bars of magnetizable material and in which the ratio of the amplitude of the magnetic wave produced by the leading edges of the bars being moved past a character reading system is increased by slanting or inclining the leading edge of one bar with respect to the movement while maintaining the leading edge of the other type of bar perpendicular to the movement.
And, further, Willits et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,743,820 discloses a rotary scanning decoder for reading labels having binary data bits, each of which comprises a pair of contrasting areas, the ratio of areas in each bit defining the bits' binary status. Once again, the label is circularly coded for scanning thereof by the sensor to thereby read the label in a circular path.